The Law of Those We Hope For: Abstraction, Infertility, and Obligation In Feminist Jewish Ethics

While recent feminist Jewish thought has used critiques of abstraction as a feminist tool to criticize the way that canonical figures in Jewish thought have theorized the “ethical relation," this paper will suggest that abstraction plays a key role in a range of experiences, including experiences of infertility. To do this, the paper will show that, like many other kinds of experiences related to childbearing and childrearing, experiences of infertility are deeply shaped by obligation, but these obligations are directed towards an Other who remains abstract—the hoped-for child. In this way, the paper challenges us to develop new tools for describing the important conceptual contributions that theorizations of parental experience can make to contemporary ethical discourse.